POPULATION
PART II
Chapter 1
Until a census can be held any estimate of the population of Hong Kong is necessarily tentative. When the last official census was taken in 1931 the total population was found to be 849,751. Since then violent fluctuations have occurred, firstly, on the influx of refugees from Canton when the Japanese attacked that city in 1938, and later in the Japanese occupation of the Colony and after its subsequent liberation in 1945. In 1941 an unofficial census carried out by Air Raid Wardens gave a figure of over 1,600,000, a total which is believed to have been reached again in 1946, after an estimated reduction by one million during the Japanese occupation. Even after the end of 1946 the population continued to grow. So far as it is possible to estimate, the population at the close of the year 1947 may have been about 1,800,000. During the years 1948 and 1949 the sum of the total number of births (102,219) and the total number of immigrants (3,765,748) was exceeded by the sum of the total number of deaths (29,721) and the total number of emigrants (3,962,460) by a margin of 124,214, but these statistics are not comprehensive, in that they do not cover all movements by land and by junk. In June, 1949, the population was estimated, on the basis of detailed statistics of numbers of persons recorded as resident in Health Districts in the Urban Area, and of estimates by the District Commissioner, New Territories, to be 1,857,000, or 1,860,000 in round figures, and the latter figure may be accepted as the estimate for the end of the year."
Of the total population the majority are of Chinese race. During the year the number of Europeans and Americans permanently resident, excluding Service personnel and their dependents, increased to about 14,600. This total includes some 9,500 British subjects from the United Kingdom and the Dominions, about 3,000 British subjects of Portuguese race and 1,920 aliens permanently resident. In addition there were some 2,200 aliens temporarily resident.
The distribution of the population revealed in the mid- year enquiry was as follows: the population of the City of Victoria and the Peak is estimated at about 887,400, and the villages of Hong Kong, 70,100; while that of Kowloon
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